There’s an off chance that you haven’t heard of Allan McNish. But then again, if you haven’t then you probably haven’t heard of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, either. McNish has stood on the podium following the hardest race in history more times than you’ve been in line at Whole Foods – and that just barely scratches the surface of the man’s racing career. Along with driving F1 cars for teams like Renault, Toyota and Benetton, McNish has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright and done it over again. But his resume reads like a proverbial “what’s what” of racing history, with copious victories around the world in anything from DTM to F1 cars.*
But while McNish has had an undeniably impressive racing career, one of the most surprising bits is the gas in his current race tank. In December 2005, Audi shocked the racing world by unveiling its latest Le Mans Prototype – the R10 TDI. Despite a universally pessimistic reaction from the pundits, it went on to be the first diesel powered car to win at Le Mans. The company took another risk and went one step greener, switching from diesel to biodiesel. And with wood chips in the tank, the R10 TDI kept winning for three years until its retirement, despite ever advancing competition. The car has since been replaced by the R15, which also uses advanced biodiesel fuel to get around the track.
We sat down with the man himself to learn a bit more about the benefits and drawbacks of racing on biofuel. Read on for the highlights, which have been abbreviated for easier reading, and watch the full interview here.
GR: What are the key differences between driving a diesel powered race car and a gasoline powered car? Can you talk about engine braking, and pit stops with relation to miles per gallon, etc?
AM: …On the road, and on the track, there’s a very similar sort of feeling, and change of driving style… Except obviously, on the circuit, with the much-increased horsepower, but especially the torque that we gained when we went from the already very efficient V8 FSI direct injection to the V12 TDI direct injection. All the information I had from driving a diesel road car – you could use quite a lot of it.
Nowadays, diesel is very very different to what the historical thought about it was. We’ve got extremely efficient in clean diesel – actually the diesel itself, the fuel you put in the car. But also the engines as well and the particle filters… you’ve got effectively a clean burn. You can use all of it – it’s not as though you’ve got a lot of deposits and particles coming out the back.
The driving side of it was interesting because when we first got in the race car, you basically had and ENORMOUS kick in the back. The acceleration was unbelievable. It was just BOOM, there. Instant power, and then off you went. But then when you came to the braking, and downshifts… because the engine is quiet, which is again something that surprised me, you’ve got to retune your brain to the fact that you’re only revving to maybe 5,000 rpm.
When you’re playing with the downshifts, you’ve got maybe less engine braking – it’s just a reevaluation of what your senses are telling you. The big thing for us is that we got a LOT more torque.
GR: Corner exits?
AM: It was corner exits, but also just the sheer power on the straights. Overtaking became easier.
And the second thing was, we gained a lot of fuel economy. A significant amount, and that meant less pit stops, which gained us a lot compared to petrol cars. You have to work very very hard to even gain a tenth of a second on the track. Therefore, we are looking for every little advantage possible. And we found a real gem in the pocket when we produced the first ever purpose-built diesel racing engine.
For so many years, motorsport has gone down the same route – gasoline engines with big displacement and lots of horsepower. This is typical of Audi in a bit of a way… they say “what have we got, what do you think we can do, and we’ll do something very different to everybody else” – which sets yourself up if you’re not successful. However, thankfully, each time they’ve done it… like with quattro [all-wheel drive], the rest of the rallying community laughed at them, saying you know, “that’s for tractors,” then they won the world championship. And I can’t think of a world championship that’s been won since without all-wheel drive. It’s the same with the FSI direct injection that they introduced at Le Mans…
GR: Do you think diesel will follow that same trend? Obviously, other manufacturers have now jumped on the diesel train… do you think diesel is going to go the same way in racing, and would you personally go back to gasoline?
AM: …when we won that first 12h of Sebring, it alerted manufacturers that there was an alternative – you didn’t have to use gasoline to produce a high performance, cutting-edge technology racing engine. A lot of people in the paddock didn’t believe it was diesel – I had a guy come up to me in the paddock and say “no, really, come on – what does it run on? Is it gasoline?” Accept that it’s diesel! It’s not dirty, and it’s not smoky, and it’s got a lot of power, torque and fuel economy. We’ve got all the benefits with none of the negatives.
In Europe we’ve been very used to that for a long period of time, but I don’t think in the US, you’ve had to. You’ve had very low gas prices, and to be honest, it was just the way the market has been… but now, the world is changing very quickly. The way that the car market is, I think people are realizing the potential of the technology that has been running in Europe… and I’ve certainly been running in my current road car – and previous road cars for quite a long time.
GR: What was your first diesel car?
AM: I had diesels when I was a little kid – in the late eighties, because my family is from a car dealership background. Within the Audi range, I had an A4 3.0 TDI. It’s a funny thing because I’m a racing driver and I like to go fast – I always thought, you’ve got to have 300 horsepower in a road car, or it’s not going to be a road car…. But with the torque of diesel, it felt like 450 horsepower. It was huge, instant torque.
GR: Do you think in racing we’ll be experimenting with differing fuels? Now we’re already using more and more biofuel in diesel.
AM: I think we are and I think we should. I think motor racing is an appropriate platform to be doing it with. Sports car racing is the one place where you’ve got the option of a variety of beliefs. We strongly believe that diesel is not the next generation – it’s NOW.
On the biofuels, the second generation actually uses biomass to liquid, which means that basically there is biodegradable mass product in the diesel, which I find a bit odd really, because they said it was wood chips, and I was thinking of old cupboards and so on actually used in our racing car. And this was not just to race – it was to go to the world’s fastest race – the Le Mans 24h – and I think now, the time is right. And that the world is opening up in mindset.
GR: We’re [in the USA] late bloomers, compared to the rest of the world. We’re late bloomers here, right?
AM: I think that here is a perfect market. Look at it: you like to have power, but also you do long distances, so you need fuel economy. When you’re going, say, 70 miles per hour on the highway, you’re getting probably a 30-40% benefit over gasoline. It’s unbelievable. It’s been an untapped secret here [in the US]. In France where I live, about 75% of cars sold are diesel – and have been for 10 years.
GR: There’s an education we have to have here – get the public used to diesel.
AM: It’s a case of where your history comes from, and timing. Right now with different regulations, a new administration and a push on the environmental side of it, and of course gas prices getting higher and higher.
GR: Getting back to racing, how have your strategies differed? Are you able to come out of a corner and pass someone in a shorter length of time? Are you passing where you wouldn’t normally?
AM: You pass in safer positions. …you’ve got a tricky sort of thing to combine, because you want to get that overtake done as quickly as possible. But you can’t just nail that throttle in the middle of a corner, because you’ve got so much torque that the rear just can’t keep up. One of the big challenges for us was to harness that torque and power.
Four years down the line, we’ve developed the turbochargers and the throttle response to utilize the performance better – make it more driveable. We’ve developed traction control systems, which was unique again, because nobody had ever done a diesel. So nobody had ever done a traction control system. After a year in development, we were finally able to take advantage of the diesel torque. Over a long race, that and the fact that you’re in a position to overtake more often, means that your traffic issues are less.
Then add in the fact that the noise is much less – is a BIG factor in a 24h race. You don’t realize it until you’ve not had that noise to deal with. And finally, you don’t stop in the pits as often. That’s how we managed to pull in three straight Le Mans victories in 2006, 7, and 8.
*Find his full bio here: http://www.allanmcnish.com/output/biography.asp
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